All The Pretty Little Horses
by Artemis Day
Summary: She looks over her shoulder at him. The tears streaming down her face aren't like the baby's. They're few and they're quiet, and they speak louder than words ever could. "I messed up."


**A/N: While this can be read as a standalone fic, this story is primarily a companion piece and prequel to my Lokane fic, Lokiday. It is not necessary to read that to understand this, however, if you are reading Lokiday already, you'd better read this too, because what happens here is going to be important to that story and ESPECIALLY it's eventual sequel. **

**Hope you enjoy!**

* * *

Natasha Romanov is an enigma, and after all this time, Clint Barton has gotten used to it. Almost everything he knows about her comes from the file he was first handed when it was his mission to kill her. She was born in Russia, raised in an orphanage, just out of her teens, trained from early childhood to be an assassin, natural redhead, etc.

Everything else he knows, he learned over time, after he 'made a different call', as she describes it. He learns that she has a weakness for stylish clothes, and hoards fashion magazines away with her stash of weapons so she can flip through them in the calmer moments. He learns that she speaks several languages other than English and her native Russian. Her flawless grasp of both French and Italian saved him from an international incident two years into their partnership, and once he's done being utterly humiliated, he can never thank her enough. He learns that she doesn't quite have the stoicism everyone thinks she does. One day, after a particularly difficult assignment, he found her crying in the bathroom, mascara running down her cheeks as she leaned over the sink with the water on full blast. He dried her tears with a handkerchief, having no idea what else he could do for her. Truth is, he may be more emotionally stunted than she could ever hope to be, but at least he knows that he hates seeing her like that more than anything.

She gives the handkerchief back to him the next day, ironed and dry-cleaned. All traces of vulnerability are gone from her face.

"This doesn't mean anything."

Hearing that doesn't bother him, it's what she always says.

"This doesn't mean anything," she says when they're both sitting on top of the cliff she's just saved him from falling off of.

"This doesn't mean anything," she says when they're coated in blood, standing in the middle of fifty corpses and he's just used his last arrow on the man sneaking up behind her.

"This doesn't mean anything," she says between gasps and moans as she presses her sweaty, naked body more fully into his sweaty, naked body before he pulls her into a searing kiss.

Nothing between them ever means anything to Natasha, so after a while, Clint convinces himself that it doesn't mean anything to him either.

And so it goes until the morning he gets the call.

He's relaxing in his latest temporary living arrangement, which he likes a lot more than his last one. He doesn't think he's ever had anything one would call a permanent residence, such as it is with the job. At least this place has a nice view. He spends a lot of his time on the balcony looking out.

His computer light goes on, and his cell phone vibrates. He's not anywhere near either of them, having decided to try getting some sleep. When he sees the lights and hears the tinkling tune, he sighs. The latter in particular really grates at him. He would switch it to something more pleasant- perhaps a favorite song- but then he's just going to start associating it with alarm clocks and then he'll hate it.

The email is straightforward. The return address is a dummy. It's addressed to 'Gary' and signed from 'Bobby' as per Coulson's code. The moment it hits his trash bin it'll slip into oblivion, never to be seen again. The whole system's about as 'secret agent' as one could get outside the CIA. It's the mission details themselves that pique his interest.

'_Fly to Russia. Pick up Agent Romanov,'_ it reads under all the encryptions and coding. Clint doesn't know what to make of it. Last he heard, she was off working some terrorist case in Saudi Arabia. How'd she get from there to Russia? Homesickness?

The truth is that he hasn't seen Natasha in a while. He can't remember how long exactly, or even what they did during their last encounter. He may or may not have been drunk; like_, really_ drunk. That's a real shame, now that he thinks about it. His chest starts to tighten, and he'd better start getting ready to go before it gets any worse.

Clint shuts the computer down and grabs his car keys off the coffee table. He walks into the bedroom and opens up the hidden space behind his dresser where his equipment is kept. After an hour of sharpening arrows and checking all his bow strings for wear and tear, he's almost forgotten about her, and it's just another mission.

* * *

He gets more information over the phone on the plane ride over, not that it does him any good. According to Coulson, Natasha has actually been in Russia for over five months. She suddenly came down with mononucleosis following that Saudi Arabia thing and decided to quarantine herself until further notice, that being now.

Clint listens and nods even though he can't be seen, and when Coulson is through, Clint thanks him for the intel and hangs up. He runs a hand over his face, exhaling gently. There's quite a bit on his mind right now and it starts and ends with Natasha. First of all, has it really been over five months since they've seen each other? It doesn't feel that long at all.

He knows for sure is that she's never been sick, which isn't to say it couldn't happen, Natasha's just not the type to let anything keep her out of the field. Clint knows; he's the same way.

What's also suspect is that she quarantined _herself_. Coulson would have said if Fury ordered her to do it, or if she was for whatever reason barred from leaving Russia until she was well. He starts to wonder if there are other details to this mission being kept from him, more important details.

There's a very good chance he's just being paranoid. There's an equally good chance that he's not. What's clearest to him is that Natasha really is not good for his emotional state. Why does she have to make him worry about her so much? This whole thing is shaping up to be a bigger pain in the ass than Budapest was.

Clint closes his eyes and tries to relax. The in-flight movie is something stupid and in French, but he listens along. He understands most of it, even though he's never been terribly good with French. What he gets from it is some mushy romantic schlock that's even stupider than he thought.

He's asleep by the time the credits roll, and when he wakes up, they've landed.

* * *

He has the address written in his phone. It's nothing he recognizes, but then he's only been inside Russia a few times and never for sight-seeing. He meets his contact at the airport, who has him driven out into Moscow, past buildings and heavily bundled up pedestrians. Clint starts to feel the cold himself and turns the heater up all the way.

They drive for hours. Clint gets bored fast, but he's slept too much on the plane, and now closing his eyes does nothing but block out the sky. It's getting dark, and they're moving outside city limits. He sees a lot less people than before. They're slowly being replaced by trees and snow covered fields.

Clint doesn't really want to think about Natasha, but it's inevitable. He wonders again what's really going on, if it's all as he's been told or if there is more to it. Every time he comes up with valid proof that it's nothing, something equally concrete arises in favor of a secret. He's getting sick of this constant back and forth, but he can't help it. It'll be fantastic when he's finished with this so-called 'mission' and back stateside. For many reasons, he's never been too fond of this country. It goes without saying who most of those reasons surround.

Hours go by at a snail's pace, and then they stop in front of a single house. He's not all that surprised that it's a little box shaped cottage out in the middle of nowhere. Seems like the perfect place for a contagious person to hole up in; another point in paranoia's favor.

The driver speaks in accented English, saying he needs to leave for gas, but will be back soon. Clint reads between the lines and knows he's being left there. For how long, he can't say. It seems odd, since Natasha would probably want to leave as soon as possible now that she's better. Score one more for the 'something secret' theory. It's all tied up again.

Clint exits the car and slings his bag over his shoulder. Inside is a change of clothes, emergency food and water, and his weapons cache. It's been specially made to carry his bow and arrows, at the expense of mobility. The thing is bulky and hard to maneuver, but it's not like he has to worry about being attacked out here. He does a quick scan of the area anyway, as his training dictates he must. Better safe than sorry and all that.

The cottage looks new, or else just really well kept. A warm glow that could only come from a fireplace lights up the windows. The shutters are painted blue and the door a rusted brown. It has an old fashioned gold hammer and knocker with Russian words engraved along the border. All in all, it seems perfectly inviting.

He knocks twice on the door. Someone inside shouts in Russian, and another person answers just as loud. The door bursts open; a stout, matronly woman stares up at him. Her hair is steel gray and pulled into a bun. There are wrinkles under her eyes and she has noticeable crow's feet beneath thick glasses, but otherwise she's as youthful as a sixty something year old woman can hope to be. She wears a clean, well ironed lacey apron and a red dress with tiny white polka dots that reaches her knees. She studies him for some time, and then he must pass whatever visual test she's giving him, because she pulls him inside out of the cold and into blissful warmth.

She shouts again at someone in the next room. Clint regrets, not for the first time, never sitting down and learning more than a few distinct phrases in Russian. He doesn't think 'Where is the bathroom?', 'What time of day is it?' or 'Tell me where you've planted the bomb or I take another finger,' are going to help him here.

The woman speaks faster than lightning, but Clint catches at least one thing repeated several times. It sounds like 'otets,' but he can't be sure.

A man enters now. He's also small in stature, but taller than the woman, and much younger. His brown hair is matted down and badly in need of washing. His hands are covered in white powder, as is his apron. A family of bakers maybe? He looks and sounds irritated, speaking in an uppity tone at the woman Clint has deduced to be his mother.

She's certainly not having any of his sass. Her sharp sounding response makes even Clint want to go and stand in the corner. The woman points at him, nearly poking his chest, and repeats that word again.

Okay, so apparently he's 'otets,' whatever that means.

It must mean something serious, because the young man immediately pales and looks at Clint with the most judgmental eyes he's ever seen on another human being. He doesn't falter regardless. It'll take a lot more than a dirty look for this scrawny little kid to threaten him. When the woman speaks again in a commanding tone, the young man scrunches up his nose like he smells something awful. His mother snaps at him once more, and then looks at Clint, motioning for him to follow her son.

Clint opens his mouth, but can't think of anything to say. He has a million and one questions, of course, but he'd rather not pose them to complete strangers. He doesn't even know if they speak English. In the end, Clint goes without a word and the young man leads him into the sitting room. He makes sure to shoot him another surly look first. Clint answers with a polite smile.

They walk through the sitting room into the kitchen and from there a long hallway that leads to a staircase. Clint glances around at the many photos and decorations on the wall. He sees the woman from before, much younger and prettier. She's holding a small child in some of them, a much cuter and probably less annoying version of the man in front of him. The lighting comes from lanterns attached to the wall lit with yellow electric bulbs. The wallpaper is dark pink and neatly applied, with a red fleur-de-lis design. He knows old ladies with houses less quaint than this one. Clint likes it well enough, but this really doesn't seem like Natasha's style.

For that matter, why would what appeared to be a completely ordinary civilian family allow a sick stranger to stay in their house all this time? He knows Natasha has no living relatives. The only other possible explanation was that she'd paid them off. She certainly had the resources to do that. Still didn't seem like her. Really, this whole situation is about as 'un-Natasha' as it gets.

He'll definitely feel better when he sees her, up and healthy and wanting to leave and ready to tear that moron of a driver a new one for not waiting.

He's on the second to last step and facing a single door at the end of the hall when he hears the crying.

It is high pitched and whining, like that goddamn ringtone he hates so much. It's coming from a door to the right, away from the one across the way. The door is closed, and yet the sound is clear as a bell. Clint hears it like a trumpet blast in his eardrums. He forgets that he's on the final step and stumbles. His guide openly snickers and looks condescendingly at him. Clint barely notices him anymore. He's just sort of blurring into the background along with everything else. All of a sudden, Clint can't hear anything except the crying.

He can just make out thundering footsteps behind him, and then the woman pushing past him with another burst of Russian. She runs into the room. Opening the door makes the crying louder; it's almost unbearable.

Clint looks at the young man. He's at the right age to father a child. There's also the possibility that he has a sister around the same age who isn't home right now. There were plenty of young women in those photos downstairs. One of them is bound to be her. Or maybe the aging woman has beaten all odds and given birth again. There are so many conceivable explanations for this, that reasonably, he shouldn't be bothered by the baby's presence.

He is, because he knows that not a single one of those explanations is the right one. He doesn't know how he knows, he just does. The very second he heard it, everything was clear to him. He had found the real reason for all this. If he opened that door across the hall, he would not find a woman recovering from a deathly illness, and he would not find Natasha back to normal and ready to get the hell out of here. What scares him is that he has no idea what he's going to find.

The crying stops, leaving behind a ringing in his ears, then the door opens and out steps the woman, a writhing pink bundle in her arms. She looks at him and smiles warmly, and brings it over to him. Clint swallows back bile, wanting so badly to turn and run and not stop until he's halfway around the world and back in bed and ready to believe this was all just a horrible dream. The knowledge of who is waiting for him keeps him still, and only just.

He suddenly remembers their last meeting with absolute clarity, every dirty detail down to the letter, from the sounds to the smells to the date and time _nine months ago_.

The woman holds the baby out to him. It looks to be asleep at first, but then it wiggles its feet and opens its eyes.

_His_ eyes.

"Chloe," the woman says. It's the first thing she's said all day that he understands.

Her son claps a callous hand on the shoulder, squeezing hard.

"Pozdravlyayem, _Otets_."

Oh yeah, this was _way _worse than Budapest.

* * *

Natasha is asleep when Clint enters her room. It occurs to him that this is the first time he's ever seen her like this, in all the years they've been working together and sleeping together in the biblical sense. This is probably the most relaxed she's ever been, her face not smiling or frowning, but her lips parted to show shining white teeth. There is a strand of red hair hanging away from the others, over her forehead and between her eyes. It's grown longer since he last saw her, and has lost a bit of its curl that Clint always thought was natural. She is on her side, one arm tucked under her head for support, the other draped loosely over her chest.

Clint crosses the threshold into the room and instantly wants to leave again. Natasha has always been an early riser. She'll be up and dressed and ready to go before Clint has so much as cracked an eye open. He wonders if she was doing it on purpose. Seeing it now, he wouldn't blame her. He really didn't know how to handle the fact that this was the same woman he'd once seen take out fifty men armed with nothing but a hunting knife and a can of hairspray.

She just looks so_ normal_ in her sleep.

Also, she snores.

He sits in an old rocking chair in the corner while he waits. It groans under his weight, but doesn't collapse. He still tries not to move. There are at least three screws loose that he can see.

For a long time, nothing changes, and yet Clint has more than enough on his mind to distract him. He can still here the crying in his ears, can see those eyes just like his staring up at him in wonderment. A paranoid part of him thinks there was also recognition there, but how could a baby know if some random stranger was really her...

Clint closes his eyes and tries to just go to sleep.

When Natasha wakes up, it's about when Clint is actually starting to feel tired. She is as catlike as ever, just opening her eyes and looking straight at him. She doesn't move an inch, either to get up or to stretch. They stare at each other; Clint hasn't got a clue what to say to her, and she's clearly not about to start a conversation any time soon.

"Hey," he eventually comes up with. "Good morning."

Natasha looks sideways at the clock. It reads 11:30 pm and outside the window is pure darkness. Natasha sits up, fluffing her pillow to give her leverage. Clint thinks for a moment he should go and do that himself. After all that she's been through, Natasha could use the help. Then he remembers that this is Natasha and he stays where he is.

Of the many, many, many questions he has, the first one to come out is arguably the least important.

"Who are these people?"

Natasha looks away from her fingers, which she's been playing with.

"Old friends," she answers vaguely. "They're trustworthy."

Clint nods, leaving it at that. Much as he'd love to press her, he knows the futility of it. If Natasha wants to tell him more, she will in her own time. There isn't an interrogation process in the world that can break her down.

The night passes without further incident. Natasha sleeps a little more, and somewhere in between then and morning, Clint catches some shut eye of his own. He wakes up to find her on the floor, doing 500 sit-ups. She follows up with 500 pushups and 500 chin-ups. Then she starts practicing punches and kicks. Clint watches and doesn't make a move to stop her, even though he's pretty sure she should take it easy. It can't have been that long since she... well, since the crying started.

She finishes up rather abruptly at 3:00. A minute later, the woman comes in with two trays of food. Natasha's is noticeably fuller. They exchange pleasantries before she leaves them alone again. She gives Clint a nod, but otherwise, he goes unacknowledged. Natasha digs into a bowl of steaming soup, drinking the whole thing down in under a minute. She starts on the salad next, glancing up mid bite of a carrot piece when she feels Clint's eyes on her.

"She doesn't want me getting up too much," she explains. "Not for another couple of days."

_'Don't tell her anything,'_ says her eyes.

"Right," Clint says.

_'How can I? I don't speak Russian.'_

He starts eating his own food and they don't speak again.

* * *

Two days go by. The son comes later on the first night for their dinner trays, and brings with him blankets and a pillow for Clint. Natasha translates for him. They don't have another guest room, so he's just going to have to make do with the floor. If the son thinks that's going to bother Clint, he's disappointed. Clint has spent two weeks in a row on an ice cold metal slab in a Turkish prison. This is nothing to him.

Natasha eventually does tell him more about their hosts, but not what Clint really wants to know. As he suspected, they run a bakery in the nearby town, fifteen miles away. The woman's name is Roberta, and the son is Gregor. Also living with them is Roberta's husband, Henri. He is Gregor's step-father, his real father having died in an accident when he was just a kid. There is also a daughter, fathered by Henri. Her name is Olga, and she attends college in Moscow. She and Henri speak fluent English, but since neither of them are around (Henri is on a business trip), Clint is pretty much lost without Natasha.

She tells him that she came up with the mono story following the completion of her mission in Saudi Arabia. By then, she was only just starting to show and knew she needed to get somewhere safe. This old house in the middle of Russia was the best place she could think of. Still, the biggest questions go unanswered.

It's better for both of them that he just accepts it and moves on. They are exhausted, mentally, physically or both. As such, those first two days go by mostly in silence.

The third day dawns with a whiter sky than Clint can remember. His back aches from a floor not even two thick layers of wool can protect him from. He finds Natasha out of bed, and not stretching. Instead, she's by the window looking out. Nothing shows on her face, not that it would, she's just watching the snow fall, a shawl pulled over her shoulders to keep her warm.

"I didn't feel like lying down anymore," she says when he asks her what she's doing. She doesn't say anything else.

Clint sits on the window sill and tries to count the number of snowflakes that pass his vision. He misses half of them and it hardly relieves his boredom anyway. Occasionally, he steals glances at Natasha, who is unchanged from this morning.

"You know how much longer?" he asks.

"Not long," she answers. "Roberta is pleased with my progress. She'll probably okay me to leave by the end of the week. Think you can handle it?"

She looks at him now, but still there's nothing.

"Pretty sure," he says, rolling his shoulders. "Could use another blanket to sleep on, that floor is harder than it looks."

For a second there, he thinks he sees a smile.

"I'll talk to Roberta."

He nods, and so goes another day.

* * *

Sleep doesn't come so easily tonight. It's colder thanks to the snow and Roberta seems to be one of those crazy thermostat people who never raises or lowers it from a certain temperature no matter what. The extra comforter underneath makes him more comfortable, but perhaps he should have asked for one more on top.

He takes to sitting by the window with a quilt over him. The high vantage point is more comfortable for him anyway. He can turn his head one way and look out at the rising forest; he can turn it the other way and watch Natasha sleep. The sound of her soft breathing fills the room, reminding him just how quiet it can get when you're in the middle of nowhere.

It's broken by a sound like the tinkling of a bell. Clint only partially listens as it comes and goes, but each time it gets both louder and longer until it is an unpleasant shriek that he can finally place. His stomach does a backflip as her cries pierce the night. Trying not to listen doesn't work, nor does covering his ears or pushing himself closer to the window. She is a loud one then, like he was. His father told him that once.

"Oh yeah, kid, you screamed your head off every night," he chucked to the five year old Clint. "Kept us up for hours."

He lurches forward, shaking his head back and forth to dislodge the thought. That's the last thing he needs to be doing in this situation, comparing it to his parents.

He leans back and tries to relax, but her crying will not cease. It only seems to get louder. How on earth is Natasha sleeping through this?

Another door opens and Clint breathes in. His need for air is greater than it should be. He may have stopped without realizing. Outside, Roberta runs for the nursery, spouting out Russian as she goes. When her voice fades away, so does the crying. It takes longer, and when she finally goes silent, Clint can just hear Roberta's soft, soothing voice lulling her back to sleep.

It's much later when he finally falls asleep himself. The sky is getting lighter and the hour hand on the clock is hovering right over the six. The next time Clint is conscious, Roberta is banging on their door to wake them, shouting a word Clint has come to understand means 'breakfast.'

The hour hand is on seven.

* * *

"Does Coulson know about all this?"

Natasha looks up from her squat thrusts. She stands up tall and stretches her arms over her head to the ceiling. Her shirt lifts to her midriff and for once, Clint can't bring himself enjoy the view.

"He did send me the mission details," Clint adds as an afterthought.

"He knows as much I need him to," she says.

Clint nods. He knows everything, then.

"Not easy to pull a wall over his eyes, is it? I doubt even Fury could."

"Nope," Natasha says unaffectedly. "Good thing he's trustworthy."

She gets down and starts on sit-ups. He's not bound to get anymore conversation out of her, lest he ruin her focus. The snow is lighter today and the temperature higher, so Clint goes for a walk and stays out until dinner.

* * *

She cries again that night.

Clint sits by the door tonight. The trees were starting to blend into one another, so he should probably avoid the window for a while. He sits with his hands in his lap, twiddling his fingers like a little boy in trouble, but really he's just trying to keep them busy so they don't reach for the doorknob. It's taking Roberta much longer to wake up this time. In fact, he hasn't heard a peep out of her since she came and took their trays away ages ago. Maybe she had secretly left out the back door and drove to her bakery to get an early start. Maybe she had her door closed tonight and couldn't hear the crying. Maybe she was dead.

His fingers creep along his lap to the door, itching for the feel of cool bronze against the pads. He absolutely should not be doing this. He's got his hand on the knob and he's turning it with painstaking movements when he should be going to bed and forgetting all this. He should, but the closer the door comes to opening, the louder the voice in his head gets, the soft, beautiful female voice he knew when he was just a little boy. He's crying and she's soothing him. If she were here right now…

He opens the door a crack and that's when Roberta's opens and Roberta herself sprints into the baby's room. She doesn't spare him a glance, probably doesn't even sense his eyes on her. As the crying dies away, Clint slowly closes the door let his head bump the wall.

He should be more relieved than this.

He looks to Natasha, whom he suspects slept peacefully through all of this. Lucky her.

But, no. Her eyes are wide open on the ceiling. Her face is relaxed. Her fingers are steepled.

Clint doesn't say a word.

* * *

It's lunchtime the next day that he can't take it anymore. She's cutting into a small salad soaked in dressing and he's picking at a ham sandwich. There's a tiny bit of one corner nibbled off that he's been staring at. He puts it down and claps his hands together. She stills.

"So what's our next move?"

Her eyes slowly draw up to him over her brow. Her hair falls into her face, in need of a trim.

"Are you talking about us or her?"

She speaks in even tones, but it doesn't lessen the blow of this being the first time Natasha's ever alluded to her existence, and still she's her same old calm and rational minded self. Treat everything like just another assignment, that's the Romanov way. A part of him finds it calming, especially after last night.

"We're going to have to take her somewhere," he says, matching her emotionlessness with years of well-honed practice. "Unless you were planning on leaving her here."

"Can't," she says. She stabs her fork through an olive, removing the pit. Popping it in her mouth, she chews slowly and deliberately while Clint waits for her to finish and go on. "Roberta doesn't mind for now, but she's too old to care for a baby full time. We'll take her back to the states and find a place for her there."

"The states," Clint answers, his lips barely moving. There's at least one thing that makes sense coming from her.

"So does that work for you?" she asks.

He watches her spread cream cheese across a scone and his mouth twitches upward. That's another little thing he knows about Natasha: scones with cream cheese are her favorite comfort food. Perfect for after difficult missions or decision making when she needs to relax and unwind and gather her thoughts. He used to think he should find a food that helps him like that, and then they could trade recipes or something. He's never had time to sit down and try.

"Does it?" she says.

Clint blinks his eyes a couple of times. How long has it been since she asked the first time?

"Yeah, I got it," he says finally. He then coughs and runs fingers through his short but thick hair. He's about to take a dive off the deep end, and he doesn't have a plan at all. "Listen, if you want to talk about it, or what happened and-"

Natasha drops the knife and stands, walking to the door.

"I think I'll take a walk," she says, and then she's gone.

Why did he ever think that would work?

* * *

She starts crying again, like clockwork; same volume, same frequency, same intensity in his chest and throat as he sits and listens to her. The difference is that he doesn't have to sit by the door tonight and fight with himself over whether or not he should open it. He's been in the bathroom for over an hour, letting alternatively too hot and too cold water wash over his sore back while doing nothing for the soreness in his head. There's not a lot one can do for that kind of pain, though.

When she starts, it isn't quite as piercing to him as in the last two days. Maybe he's getting used to it. Maybe it just reminds him of the inevitable.

One time, he tells himself. If he just goes in there one time, not even to calm her, just to look at her. If just one more time, he can see her and know that she is real and this isn't something that will just go away when he wakes up in the morning like so many dreams of flying cows and loose teeth, maybe that will be enough. It doesn't have to mean anything at all.

It shouldn't mean anything at all.

He dresses in clean clothes left out for him (they don't fit right) and dries his hair with a towel. It's so short these days, that it's mostly dry already, but he wants to be sure. He steps out of the bathroom. How convenient that it's right on the halfway point between Natasha's room and the nursery. He first looks down the hall at the former. It would really be much safer to just walk back and forget about it. Just a few hours ago, Roberta gave Natasha a clean bill of health and her permission to leave whenever she's ready. Natasha informed him that she'd already called for a car. They'd be gone by noon tomorrow.

That means this is his last chance. After this, he'll only ever hear her again when he sleeps. That's going to be unbearable.

Swallowing back every single voice and emotion and anything else that might drive him back to the safety of Natasha's bedroom, Clint takes the first steps to the nursery. Her crying gets louder with every single one. He almost has to stop, and that is just ridiculous. He's a top agent of SHIELD for God's sake. He's been attacked, shot at, and almost blown up more times than any normal human being ever should, and never once has he been afraid. Not like this.

_Not like this._

He finds his way to her door and stops outside. She's screaming at the top of her lungs, it's a wonder Roberta hasn't woken up yet. Clint looks at her door right across the hall. It's bolted tight and no noise comes from within, not that he'd know with what's going on right behind him.

That's when he hears something else, just below the crying, something soft and sweet, and distinctly feminine, and so very familiar that it makes his heart stop. He leans forward to glance into Natasha's room. The door is halfway open, so he has an easy time finding her bed.

It's empty.

He starts to turn around, and as he does, she starts to sing.

'_Hush a bye, don't you cry_

_Go to sleep, my little baby.'_

She's on her knees in front of the crib. The baby's tiny legs swathed in wool kick at the air while she cries her heart out. Natasha rests her hands on the bar to support her weight. Her head is bowed, but her voice is clear as day.

'_When you wake, you shall have_

_All the pretty little horses.'_

She hasn't got much of a singing voice, he notices. Her high notes don't quite reach and her voice wavers on every word. In fact, her whole body seems to be shaking, but she continues on without pause. When she finishes once, she starts right up again. It takes time, but soon the baby goes silent, and her body still, and all that can be heard anymore is Natasha singing.

'_Dapples and greys, pintos and bays,_

_All the pretty little horses.'_

She looks over her shoulder. The tears streaming down her face aren't like the baby's. They're few and they're quiet, and they speak louder than words ever could. They drive Clint to silence and they make his own eyes burn.

Natasha Romanov is an enigma, and he's always known it. Perhaps this is the best evidence of it all.

How long has she been holding this in?

How many times has she stood outside the door like he did? Listening, waiting, wondering?

How much does she wish she could go without fear to her child and hold her like a mother is supposed to?

He doesn't know.

He'll never know.

"I messed up," she says brokenly.

Clint closes his eyes, nods his head. "Well, you lasted longer than I did."

Then he steps fully into the room and gets down on his knees beside her. He places his hand over hers and she takes it, no questions asked. There is nothing left for them to say, so they don't say anything. They both just watch her. She's so tiny he can hardly believe it. How is this something he and Natasha created? How is it possible?

She fidgets a little in place, jerking her arms up and down, reaching for something she can't grab. Her eyes come open for just a moment, and for the second time, Clint feels like he's looking into a mirror. She's going to grow up with those eyes. Will she ever know where she got them from?

Because Clint is not under any illusions, this night has changed nothing, except perhaps to bring him just a little bit closer to the woman he knows so little about and still loves with all that he can love another person.

He is not a father.

She is not a mother.

They are the kind of broken, damaged people who do more harm than good, and it's only through SHIELD that they can find any meaning in their lives. It's not through children, not like normal people. They aren't normal, and she deserves better.

She looks at them both, one after the other, before her eyes droop back down and she sleeps. She's never going to remember seeing them like this, even if they never forget.

She's never even going to know who they are.

* * *

It's raining when their flight to New York comes in. They go with a typical cover, a random traveling couple coming home from vacation. Their extra passenger makes the illusion more convincing, though Clint gets really sick really fast of people coming over and gushing about how cute she is.

He rolls the stroller out of the airport, Natasha at his side. They don't make conversation. Neither of them are ready yet.

They drive their rented car over a hundred miles, all the way down the coastline until they reach an old brick building. It looks different than when Clint last saw it over thirty years ago. Since then, the paint has brightened and the facilities expanded. Three new, smaller buildings join the one large one he used to call home. The sign on the door reveals that Sister Mary Catherine is still running the show after all these years. That's good. It means that she'll be in good hands. Sister Mary Catherine was always one of the best women he ever knew, so full of love and compassion for all the hundreds of children who came into her care every day.

He had called ahead, and so she's waiting by the door. She looks smaller than he remembers, that habit is doing her no favors, but her eyes and her smile hold nothing but the youth and wisdom she had when he was just a kid and needed someone to cry to in the dead of night when nightmares kept him awake. Clint waves to her out the car window as they pull up.

The baby is quiet in the backseat. She hasn't made much noise at all since they started driving.

Clint unstraps her carrier and walks her up the sidewalk. He had paused initially, to see if maybe Natasha wanted a final look at her.

"Hurry up," was all she said while she stared out the opposite window. Clint shakes his head, but on some level he understands perfectly. He can barely look down at her himself as he hands her over to the well-meaning nun.

"Chloe," he tells her, forcing himself to sound like he's doing nothing more than handing over files to Coulson for review. Like he's indifferent to it all. Sister Mary Catherine pulls away the blanket covering her face and brushes wispy bits of fuzzy red hair atop her head. She looks at Clint and she smiles.

"She has your eyes," she says.

And he almost breaks.

"I know."

* * *

Six months go by. Clint doesn't see Natasha at all. She's been away on missions; he's mostly been making use of his vacation time to take that cross country trip through Europe that he's always thought about. He can safely say he enjoyed himself immensely, seeing new sights and meeting new people, and having plenty of adventures that don't involve threats to his life or the lives of a small city's population. He even met a nice young girl in Latvia who wanted to spend the night with him, but he turned her down.

He comes home and goes right back to work, and suddenly, his fun little trip seems like just time wasted no matter how much fun he had or how often he smiles in all the pictures he took. What has he really accomplished?

Well, he knows that his arms are like those of a Greek God, or that there's a really desperate kid in Latvia who really wants to get laid and will say anything. That's something.

He gets a call from Coulson about a new assignment, and as he skims through the details, one name sticks out to him.

Looks like it's another couples retreat, this time with a Serbian bomber.

He meets Natasha at the pre-established location, a truck stop in northern Montana. After all that time in Russia, the cold barely registers to him, but he still bundles up for the snow. It's really biting out there.

She's already ordered herself a coffee when he sits down. The waitress comes over and Clint requests a decaf.

"You know the plan?" she asks.

"What do you take me for?"

She smiles for a second, like she always does. The mask is firmly in place where it belongs and he can't see anything beneath it, just as it was supposed to be.

"We go in fast this time. No more incidents like that time with the Syrians," she says.

He cracks a grin. "Or Budapest…"

There's the smile again. He could do this all day.

They go over strategies while Clint gets his coffee. When they're done, Clint places a twenty over the bill and stands.

"Well, let's get to it," he says.

For some reason, Natasha stays seated. Even more baffling, she's looking at her hands. She never does that unless something is really wrong.

"Sister Mary Catherine called me."

Clint's stomach drops like a brick. He isn't sure he's heard her right, but then his hearing is second to none and Natasha never misspeaks.

"What?" he asks dumbly.

She looks up. "She's been adopted."

Clint licks his lips, but his mouth is impossibly dry. He doesn't know if it bothers him more what she's said or the fact that she's saying it at all.

"I didn't know you were keeping tabs."

She shrugs. "I figured I might as well until we know for sure. Not like it would've been long. Babies always get adopted first thing."

He nods, and it does make sense. Of course Mary Catherine would make sure the baby got the best home possible. He knows her, and he knows she always lamented that she couldn't find him a good home like all the other kids. She shouldn't have, and he always told her that. He wasn't some cute little baby with an empty head waiting to be filled when he came to her. He was a scarred ten year old with murdered parents and no future. He was lucky to be alive at all, let alone loved by anyone. He hopes she can rest easy now, now that she's made it up to him.

"Are you okay?" he asks her.

Natasha gets to her feet and grabs her coat, throwing it across her shoulders. Her hair sweeps across, and it's shorter now than it was then. He likes it better this way.

"Why wouldn't I be?"

She walks passed him, leaving him to follow in her wake to the car that's waiting for them. Looks like another trip to the airport; another plane ride; another mission; another night after of kissing and sweating and holding each other when it's over like they could actually have something real.

"This doesn't mean anything," she'll say again.

'_Yes it does,'_ he'll answer in his heart.

And when the drive gets too long and the last two nights of no sleep catch up to him and make him woozy, when her head is pressing on the glass and her breath fogging it and her hands clasped tightly together and her eyes wobbling, he thinks he can hear her again.

'_Birds and the butterflies, fluter round her eyes._

'_Poor little baby, crying mama.'_

But maybe it was just a dream.


End file.
